Chrome for Android now includes WebVR API support
Way back in 2014, Google announced it would start supporting virtual reality headsets like Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard natively within Chrome via the WebVR platform. After a few updates and a big commitment to VR at this year’s I/O conference, Google is finally ready to open up that WebVR API to developers looking to build immersive experiences into their web apps.
According to a post on the Chromium from Google’s “Virtual Reality Plumber” Brandon Jones, the latest beta version of Chrome for Android includes an Origin Trial that enables both the WebVR API and GamePad API extensions developers will need to access the position and orientation data from equipment like Google’s Daydream View headsets and Daydream controller. Although there’s only support for Android and Daydream at the moment, Google says desktop VR platforms and Google Cardboard will be supported in the next version of Chrome.
For developers hoping to build a little more 3D into the web, Jones points you to the WebVR developer site for tutorials and examples, or the Chromium bug tracker for feedback on the Chrome implementation specifically.
Source: Chromium Blog
Instagram now lets you bookmark photos and videos
For some, Instagram is a place to see what your friends and family have been up to. For others, it’s an app for marvelling at beautiful food, furniture and places captured by skilled photographers. Like Pinterest, these photos can serve as inspiration for users’ own dreams and personal projects. With this in mind, Instagram is adding a bookmark icon underneath each post in your feed. Tap it and the relevant photo or video will be added to a private page accessible from your profile. There are no folders or “boards,” so everything is lumped together, but it’s certainly simpler than keeping a text document full of random Instagram links.
Source: Instagram
Microsoft’s Cortana bot can schedule meetings on your behalf
Microsoft is trying to turn Cortana into the digital assistant of your dreams with a new AI bot called Calendar.help. The beta service requires an invitation, but once signed up, you link it to your Outlook, Google or Office 365 calendar apps. Then, when it’s time to schedule a meeting, send an email to attendees and Cc: Cortana. The message can include natural language like “sometime next week” or “make this a Skype meeting.” From there, it’ll look at your calendar and contact other attendees by itself to find the best time for everyone.
Cortana keeps things moving along by following up if recipients don’t reply within 48 hours until it finally fixes a date. It then creates an event in your calendar and sends a clickable invitation to all parties, signing off with “Warmly yours, Cortana” and a fancy signature, denoting itself as “Scheduling Assistant to [your name here].”
If this works as well as it sounds, it could be the useful (and ego-stroking) helper bot that busy folks without the cash to pay a human assistant have been waiting for. “All interactions are natural and conversational — as if a real-life assistant was coordinating the meeting,” Microsoft says. It adds that it’s powered by both machine and human intelligence, meaning that Microsoft employees might intervene when the machine can’t handle the job alone.
Microsoft launched the bot at its AI day in San Francisco, where it also revealed a Cortana-powered Harmon Kardon speaker to rival Amazon’s Echo and Google Home. As mentioned, you’ll need to join a waiting list to get Calendar.help, and Microsoft says it’s favoring “those who frequently schedule meetings with people outside their organization.” That means Office 365 business customers may get first dibs, but the program should roll out more widely in the days to come.
Source: Microsoft
Twitter for iOS Integrates Live Video Functionality Powered by Periscope
Twitter today will begin rolling out a new update for its iOS and Android apps centered around the introduction of a full-featured live video client within the social networking app (via The Verge). The live video functionality is “powered by Periscope,” but doesn’t require users to have downloaded that app separately.
The new update is an expansion of the “Go Live” Periscope button Twitter introduced to a small group of users over the summer, but is now more deeply integrated into Twitter. For example, new broadcasts will appear on followers’ timelines, and users will be able to tap to join, and then send comments and hearts. To initiate a broadcast, users must navigate to compose a tweet, tap the camera icon, tap the Periscope “Live” button, and begin the live video.
Periscope was bought by Twitter in early 2015, and the former app had a well-publicized debut year, ending up as Apple’s App of the Year in the Best of 2015 charts last December. The service has slowly tapered off in popularity ever since, leading to Twitter’s slow integration of Periscope into the main Twitter app this year. Still, Periscope told The Verge that the dedicated live-streaming app will continue to exist and be updated.
Periscope says the app will continue to be developed. “We are fully invested in the Periscope app,” said Sara Haider, senior engineering manager at Periscope. She noted that not all Periscope users regularly use Twitter.
Twitter’s hopes for live streaming have expanded beyond mobile as well, with the company introducing a live video-focused Apple TV app this past September.
Facebook began heavily integrating live video into its mobile app in 2016 as well, and even launched a specific marketing campaign aimed at promoting it. In related live video news, Instagram just this week expanded live video to all U.S. users, YouTube for iOS added the feature, the creators of the now-dead Vine app announced a live-streaming app, and an all-new service called “Live.ly” breached the top of the Top Free iPhone Apps chart this summer.
Tags: Twitter, Periscope
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This is how carbon dioxide moves around the world
NASA likes studying and illustrating the effects carbon dioxide has on our planet. It’s kind of a hobby for the organization. And now the aeronautics association has a new model for how greenhouse gases move through the atmosphere. It’s thanks in part to the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office from the Goddard Space Flight Center, combined with data from from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, chronicling the movement of CO2 from September 2014 through September 2015.
“The visualization showcases information about global carbon dioxide fields that has not been seen before in such detail: The rise and fall of carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere throughout a year; the influence of continents, mountain ranges and ocean currents on weather patterns and therefore carbon dioxide movement; the regional influence of highly active photosynthesis in places like the Corn Belt in the U.S.” the accompanying post from NASA says.
The hope of this model is to study which ecosystems are absorbing carbon dioxide and exchange of it between the atmosphere, land and sea. NASA calls that transfer process “carbon flux” and says that the new data is an “important and necessary step” toward further understanding CO2.
Next up? Adding an intricate biology module that can more accurately look at forests and other land ecosystems and analyze their impact on carbon flux.
Source: NASA
You can now livestream directly from Twitter’s mobile apps
The line between Twitter and its livestreaming service, Periscope, is beginning to fade. Starting today, anyone can broadcast by hitting the compose tweet button inside Twitter’s iOS and Android apps, followed by the “Live” button. Instead of being bounced to the Periscope app, however, you’ll now start start a livestream immediately. The functionality is still “powered by Periscope,” and indeed the experience is mostly the same as before — you write a quick caption before you go live, and then registered users can leave hearts and comments while you stream. Is this a direct reaction to Facebook Live’s growing popularity? Almost certainly.
Periscope as a self-contained service won’t be disappearing anytime soon, however. “Our apps and web player on periscope.tv remain the best place to search and discover Periscope content,” the team said in a blog post. While that may be true, the reasons for downloading and using the Periscope app are now greatly reduced. All but the most diehard Periscope fans will be better served by the Twitter app, streaming from the compose interface and watching the broadcasts that pop up in their feed.
For Twitter, it’s an opportunity to reinforce video and livestreaming as a fundamental part of its service. The company has inked a few broadcasting deals, spanning the NFL, Wimbledon tennis and the US Presidential debates, but much of its value comes from user-submitted contributions. That’s what makes it such a valuable tool for activism, citizen journalism and general public debate. The rise of Facebook Live threatens to erode that utility, while publishers, celebrities and brands hunt for larger audiences. Twitter and Periscope’s fusion was inevitable — the question is how long the company keeps the latter around as a standalone entity.
We all saw what happened to Vine.
Amazon completes its first drone-powered delivery
It’s already been three years since Amazon first revealed its somewhat audacious plan to make deliveries by drone. But the company is quite serious about this, and today it is announcing that it complete the first Amazon Prime Air drone-powered delivery. The company recently launched a trial in Cambridge, England — and on December 7th, Amazon completed its first drone-powered delivery. It took 13 minutes from order to delivery, with the drone departing a custom-built fulfillment center nearby.
Amazon’s video about the project says that it’s only servicing a few customers in the area right now, but will soon be open to dozens more who live within a few miles of the Cambridge fulfillment center. Naturally, this center is custom-built to handle these types of orders — once an order is placed and packaged up, the drone is loaded up and sent out from the facility on a motorized track. From takeoff, it flies at heights up to 400 feet to make the delivery and then return to the facility.
This Cambridge beta program has been in the works for a long time now; recently it was revealed that Amazon has been operating a secret lab in the area to get ready for the launch of Prime Air. Amazon’s page detailing this first delivery notes that the company also has Prime Air labs in the US, Austria and Israel as well as the United Kingdom, so we may hear news about test deliveries in those areas sooner or later as well.
Amazon’s FAQ page answers a few other questions about its drone delivery system. For starters, drones are only allowed to fly during daylight hours when its sunny — rain, snow or icy conditions will ground them. As for how Amazon’s drones will work in airspaces with other vehicles, the company says it believes drones should operate in a separate airspace where only small unmanned vehicles can operate. Amazon says airspace access should be “determined by capability” — the company envisions the low altitude space it is operating in should be reserved exclusively for drones similar to what it plans to deploy.
With only a couple customers able to receive drone deliveries, we’re still a long way out from this becoming a reality. But just a few years ago some thought CEO Jeff Bezos’ plan was just a joke — but it now appears to be a very real part of Amazon’s plans. The company says that “one day, seeing Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road.” It’s a big goal, but it’s going to be a lot harder to manage drone deliveries in London than it is in the peaceful pastures of Cambridge.
Source: Amazon
AirPods Slip to 4 Week Delivery Estimates for Most Countries
After launching on Apple.com early yesterday with a delivery window somewhere between December 19 and December 22 for most countries, Apple’s new wireless headphones have now slipped to 4 week delivery estimates for most launch countries and territories. Within 90 minutes, shipping windows for Apple’s United States website slipped to 4 weeks yesterday, but most European countries held onto deliveries before Christmas for a while longer, as well as having estimates a few days ahead of U.S. customers.
Now, for most territories in Europe where the AirPods are available shipping dates have lengthened to 4 weeks, including: France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Italy, and more. Elsewhere around the world, Apple.com in Singapore, Japan, and Australia have all had their AirPods shipping estimates slip to 4 weeks into 2017. In total, AirPods are available in more than 100 countries.
When they debuted on Apple.com, the company noted that the first round of AirPods shipments would be available in “limited quantities,” meaning many of its customers missed out on the opportunity to purchase the wireless headphones as Christmas presents. There remains a sliver of hope, however, with Apple noting that its retail stores will receive “regular AirPods shipments,” but it’s not clear which stores specifically, and when they’ll begin getting the shipments. Apple authorized resellers and select carriers will also get some AirPods inventory next week.
Apple has also added a few support pages onto its website centering around how to use the AirPods, adjusting its features, and the device’s various technical specifications.
Tag: AirPods
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Apple TV Universal Search Expands to 10 More Apps, Including Apple Music, TBS, and TNT
Apple TV universal search received a major update today, expanding to 10 new apps in the United States. On the fourth-generation Apple TV, users can now search for movies and TV shows on Apple Music, Animal Planet GO, Crunchyroll, CuriosityStream, Investigation Discovery GO, Science Channel GO, TBS, TNT, TLC GO, and Tribeca Shortlist.
For those unfamiliar with universal search, it’s a feature that allows users to conduct Siri voice searches or text-based searches to find TV and movie content across a wide range of channels. At launch, universal search only supported a few channels, but Apple has been rapidly expanding the feature to encompass additional channels.
Apple TV universal search is now available for a wider number of apps in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K., but the feature is limited to iTunes and Netflix in France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. In some other countries and regions, only movies in iTunes are supported.
Meanwhile, in Germany, users can now search for episodes on Galileo.
Related Roundups: Apple TV, tvOS 10
Tag: Apple Music
Buyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Caution)
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How to enable the app drawer on the Huawei Mate 9
By default, all your apps are shown on your home screen on the Huawei Mate 9. But it’s easy to enable a more traditional Android app drawer.
Gone are the days when using a phone with Huawei’s EMUI software meant having to choose between and iOS-like home screen setup — where all your apps are shown on the home screen — and using a custom launcher. The latest EMUI 5 software, included on the Huawei Mate 9, makes it easy to keep your home screen relatively uncluttered, leaving less-used apps in the app drawer.
Enabling this option is easy — in fact, it’s a top-level setting in EMUI 5.
Drag down your Notification shade and hit the cog icon to go to Settings.
Tap Home Screen Style.
Select Drawer.
You’ll then be kicked back to your home screen, complete with your handy new app drawer. (Note that you’ll need to re-arrange things in the new launcher view, as app and widget placements won’t carry over.)
That’s it. Enjoy your new app drawer!
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